


The Cry of Elisha after Elijah

by intothesilentland



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, First Kiss, Fix-It, Heaven, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Reunion, s15e20
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:07:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27649301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intothesilentland/pseuds/intothesilentland
Summary: The kicker is, Dean had been trying to live.Really live. And not bite out in anger at the fraying of his heart: Cas, gone, Jack, gone—all that was left was him and his brother, and Dean had been trying to live, in spite, in light of that.In a world like the unsteady first steps of a child, apprehensive arms and hands cradling the air around them, ready for a slip, excited for a step, Dean had been trying to walk forward, too. Though every step had meant every pain.Upon his death, and arrival in heaven, Dean sets out to find the angel. He has to tell him. Cas has to know.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 61
Kudos: 916
Collections: SPN Finale "Destiel is CANON" Collection





	The Cry of Elisha after Elijah

**Author's Note:**

> okay i dont really have words so i am extremely sorry, friends, it played out like this. what a joke. if you were left hurt by what happened last night i think that's fair enough. for my own peace of mind, i have decided the following: (these are copied from my tweets earlier today so pls ignore the time references if they no longer apply)
> 
> \- im writing 2 different fix-its  
> \- one to stave off th immediate anger/lack of closure from the finale, of dean meeting cas in heaven  
> \- one longer, rewriting the last 2 eps, where dean gets to live a happy life on earth (w cas)
> 
> doing the first because i appreciate that, being MORE "canon-compliant", whatever the fuck that means at this point, it will probably give more people a sense of comfort. it'll also come sooner, being shorter, and so be able to "fix" things more immediately
> 
> doing the second one because let's be honest, we wouldnt have chosen those last 2 eps to be the last 2 eps of ANY show, lmao. and dean deserved a life on earth, happy, safe, and YOU deserve the message that trauma doesnt end in death, that theres hope for healing, always, in life
> 
> this is the first of those fics. the second will come soon.
> 
> love you all. canon bi dean. deancas endgame. everything you're feeling is valid. lots of love <3

_The Cry of Elisha after Elijah_

The Chariot of Israel came,  
And the bold, beautiful knights,  
To free from his close prison  
The friend who was my delight;  
Cold is my cry over the vast deep shaken,  
Bereft was I, for he was taken.

Through the straight places of Baca  
We went with an equal will,  
Not knowing who would emerge  
First from that gloomy vale;  
Cold is my cry; our bond was broken,  
Bereft was I, for he was taken.

Where, then, came they to rest,  
Those steeds and that car of fire?  
My understanding is darkened,  
It is no gain to enquire;  
Better to await the long night’s ending,  
Till the light comes, far truths transcending.

I yield, since no wisdom lies  
In seeking to go his way;  
A man without knowledge am I  
Of the quality of his joy;  
Yet living souls, a prodigious number,  
Bright-faced as dawn, invest God’s chamber.

The friends that we loved well,  
Though they vanished far from our sight,  
In a new country were found  
Beyond this vale of night;  
O blest are they, without pain or fretting  
In the sun’s light that knows no setting.

_(From the Welsh of Thomas Williams, Bethesa’r Fro)_

The kicker is, Dean had been trying to live.

Really live. And not bite out in anger at the fraying of his heart: Cas, gone, Jack, gone—all that was left was him and his brother, and Dean had been trying to _live,_ in spite, in light of that.

In a world like the unsteady first steps of a child, apprehensive arms and hands cradling the air around them, ready for a slip, excited for a step, Dean had been trying to walk forward, too. Though every step had meant every pain.

He’d tried to fill out the edges of Cas’s last words to him—and what could they mean? Love— _love—_ a word too heavy for Dean’s small worth and too small for Cas’s heavy worthiness… And Cas didn’t come back. Jack being made God, Dean had thought… had thought they could live, dwell, blossom out into every crack and crevice of meaning in that word, ‘dwell’, and all the contentment it implied: Jack God, he would bring Cas back. But he didn’t. Dean and Sam had tried to bring Cas back from the empty themselves but found him _gone, nowhere,_ and by contrast Jack was _everywhere,_ and still himself—but that was bullshit. _Every drop of falling rain, every speck of dust that the wind blows, and in the sand, and in the rocks, and in the sea._ Jack claimed to be everywhere and Cas was _nowhere,_ nowhere Dean could follow. Better heaven than the empty, but—but—

Dean has _prayed._ Has begged Cas to come back, come _home,_ to all of them, to Dean.

Cas said he loved him. So why isn’t he worth staying with?

Maybe Cas _is_ in heaven. He’s not in the empty—and maybe heaven has reminded Cas what better bliss life as an angel was, life as an angel before Dean—life, any life, before Dean.

Dean would not have tired of Castiel. Given the chance, Dean would have spent forever with the angel, and never tired of him. But Castiel tired of him.

Dean prayed. Prayers like flinging gravel into the sky. And all this: a storm inside of Dean who had sworn he was finished with storms, in light of Cas’s final words to him. That Dean was more than the anger and pain which has rotted at his insides since the moment his mother burned, his heart burned, their lives and hopes for ordinary and happy futures burned. The anger which has grown and sparked, been blown and poked and stoked with every death, every loss, every damn fuck-up of Dean’s and every time the people he loved, needed, left him to rot.

Cas said he was more than that.

And then he left, too.

The earth not his home. Surely not heaven. Surely he couldn’t—not with Dean’s poison heart, not with the weight of everything he’s done: if he tried to tread on the soil beyond those metaphorical pearly gates, he’d sink through, clean through. His heart is too heavy. They weight is too heavy.

But still Dean tried—tried to be worthy of that love which Cas could never have felt for him but claimed he did with soft smiling certainty like a sun rising—Dean tried to live, he even got a _dog,_ dammit, he was _living,_ he was living with loss—

And now this.

Jack had said when people had to be their best, they could be. But what was Dean’s best? All that poisoned blood. He’d tried to filter it. It wasn’t enough.

This is the price of daring to hope.

These are the answers to all Dean’s sobbing prayers.

How could Cas—how could Cas say and know all those broken, poisoned things in Dean, and yet now, do _nothing,_ do nothing to answer, to reply. No words, not a message, not a sound. He must have realised Dean was not a worthy vessel to pour all these feelings into. Perhaps, in heaven, he has found a better recipient.

There is something so humiliating in hope.

Dean had waited, faltering restless nights, left his door ajar and hoped to hear it creaking open—but what came? No shale-rumble of voice, the ageless, ancient being made flesh and blood, words creaking out past pale lips from some great entity, vast vacuum containing unknowable masses, within. No _hello, Dean,_ the very sound and song of home, belonging—and, it seems, acceptance. At least once upon a time. Cas knew him. Cas _knew_ him and still thought Dean worthy of being loved. Pieced his broken body and soul back together and saw Dean’s ugly, messy, storm of thoughts and didn’t consider him some toxin to be flushed, some tool to be used and then discarded… Cas learnt and grew from _Dean,_ invested in _Dean,_ loved—could he really? Could anyone really? And like _that?_

What a thing, to be loved, like that. And loved like that, by…

But where is he now? Where does Dean tread, now? It doesn’t look like hell, and the colours are too verdant and vibrant for purgatory, so—

He steps forward and is given the sense that he steps into himself, a little more. The ground doesn’t sink beneath the weight of him and all his wrongs, it presses back like soil packed with promise and life, the morning after a storm

Birdsong glitters around him.

He blinks—he doesn’t dare to hope, he’s hoped too long—hoped for twelve years, and fifteen years, and thirty-seven years—hope is the sympathy award of life, the condolences of happiness, hope is…

The sky is a solid stretch of blue. Clear and deep. He tries not to think of—

He’s really dead. He’s really gone.

“Well, at least I made it to heaven,” the words slip past his lips but are quiet and breathless with disbelief. Heaven. Dean.

“Yep,” a voice says, to his right, and he balks and turns. Bobby—and—and the worn red wooden beams of the Roadhouse, Bobby sat outside of it, drinking beers. Battered cap, smiling expectantly. Dean doesn’t remember this.

“What memory is this?” He asks, riddled with a doubt like bullet-holes, but Bobby only laughs at him. Dean frowns indignantly at the mirth. “The last I heard,” he points at the old man, “you… you were in heaven’s lockup.”

He paces forward as he speaks and looks about—yes, the Roadhouse, red chairs out front, dust-covered and shitty and homely as ever. Does this mean—Ellen and Jo—

 _“Was,”_ Bobby corrects with a chuckle. “Now I’m not.” Dean frowns, turns back to Bobby. “That kid o’ yours, before he went—wherever—made some changes here. Busted my ass out.” Dean takes a slow, unsteady seat as Bobby speaks. “And then he, well… set some things right. Tore down all the walls, up here. Heaven ain’t just relivin’ your golden oldies anymore. It’s what it always should’ve been.”

Dean watches Bobby unsteadily.

But what does this mean?

“Everyone happy, everyone together,” Bobby says.

 _Everyone?_ Dean’s eyes glaze away, piecing it together, and…

“Rufus lives about five miles, that way,” Bobby states, pointing, and interrupting the unsteady wishful tread of Dean’s thoughts. “With Aretha. Thought she’d have better taste…” But what of Cas? What about Cas? “And your mom and dad, they got a place over yonder.”

Dean blinks.

Everyone here.

But not—not the person who gave _everything,_ the person who deserved _everything…_

“It ain’t just heaven, Dean,” Bobby says, and interrupts his thoughts again. “It’s the heaven you deserve. And we’ve been waitin’ for ya.”

He pulls out a beer for Dean and opens it, handing it over.

Who’s _we?_

“So Jack did all that,” Dean asks—and damn, if he doesn’t feel a stretch of pride run out like a long road inside of him.

“Well,” Bobby sighs conversationally, “Cas helped.”

And he glances over to Dean.

The long road of pride changes. Dean’s insides tense up—delight, and fear. Maybe _this_ is what hope is. Bobby raises his eyebrows when Dean looks at him. He quirks a smile, insides clamping up at the mention of the angel, but also settling with relief, as they always did, whenever Cas was near. So Cas is safe. Cas has been busy.

“It’s a big new world out there,” Bobby says, as Dean looks down. He glances up and out, onto the landscape. Yeah—it seems it. Big and bright and maybe something too good and pure for Dean. But he’s here. So why can’t he feel like he belongs?

He licks his lips and takes a swig of his beer.

“It’s almost perfect…” He murmurs, and Bobby glances at him.

“He’ll be along,” he promises. When? Does Bobby know where Cas is? He’s about to ask if, _how_ he can get to him—to ask Cas if he meant what he said, and if he meant it, why he hasn’t come back to Dean, that’s what love does, right? In all the stories? Returns? “Time up here, it’s… it’s different.”

Oh.

He’s talking about Sammy.

“You’ve got everything you could ever want, or need, or dream,” Bobby says. But no. Not Cas. Where’s Cas? “So I guess the question is,” Bobby continues, “what’re you gonna do, now, Dean?”

Dean blinks.

Where to start?

Everything, and nothing. Jack said he would be everywhere, and nowhere. And Cas…

He looks out across the hills.

He looks at the trees, bright spears pointed up to a sky made out of heaven.

He looks at his car.

What are the fringes of paradise?

If Dean could search them, he could find—

He smiles, fear and hope.

He turns back to Bobby.

“I think I’ll go for a drive.”

He gets up, and gets into his car. His heart is a hammer inside his chest, a road he doesn’t know is calling him. With all the world before him, where to start? He has time—Ellen and Jo must be back in the Roadhouse, Ellen _dying_ to give Dean schtick for his messy hair and Jo waiting expectantly for him to arrive so she can jokingly threaten him with a rifle, just like when they first met. And a beer and a game of pool with Rufus is long overdue—but they aren’t going anywhere, and Dean has to know, he has to know…

He drives. He drives and drives with the sun, which seems to come from everywhere, pulsing at the roof of his car. Jack _said_ the answers would be in each of them. Again Dean flings his gravel-prayers up to the sky as much as he tries to trust the tides of his own heart. The gravel lands at his feet but the tides pull him on, and on, and on. He stops at places, asks people, _have you seen him? Jac—I mean, God? Have you seen him?_ And they laugh at him and roll their eyes, affectionate—typical newcomer behaviour, they seem to say to one another, and Dean glowers and gets back into his car and pushes on, ahead, forward.

Amara found Dean through Cas’s heart. Why can’t Dean find Cas through his own? Is his own not good enough?

There’s an easy answer to that, though it’s hard to swallow.

But Dean has been swallowing it, these past twelve years. And especially, these months of Cas’s absence.

Cas thought Dean was _worth_ it. Cas looked at him, and thought he was worth all of it.

The road beats on ahead. Dean’s heart remains a mallet in his chest.

He follows it—or the sun—or the sound of his own tentative hopes. Or the tide-tug in his chest. Trees and fields flash by. Is he excited, or afraid? He drums his hands on the steering wheel, if feels like weeks. Eventually, he reaches coast. In minutes, or years? Time is a gaping sea which stretches out beyond Dean’s attempts to confine it in his mind, by his own human comprehension.

He slows his car on papery grass which grows on a rising bank of white sand. He’s tired. But here, for the first time since he arrived in heaven, the sun is setting.

It slips down, promising to tread past, beyond, beneath the veil of the sea.

Dean gets out of his car. The beach, he smiles to himself. Well, at least heaven has beaches. Maybe this is his retirement gift.

He breathes in, deep—salt-stung sea air. Yeah. That earns a smile. He treads down the bank, onto the stretch of sand. Then, dammit, he takes his boots off. Feels the sand, warm and soft, beneath his wandering feet. He walks. The sound of the sea and surf is a gentler music than any he got to hear on earth. The wind tousles at his hair. Still, his heart is some tired, sore thing. But maybe peace is possible.

Danger has past. So what next? Dean’s life has been punctuated by it, like a heartbeat. What will pump his blood, now? What will assure the movements of his limbs? His waking breaths?

His answer comes. Of course, his answer comes.

There is a house. In the distance. Pale and faded wood, painted eggshell blue. Like his eyes. Like _his_ eyes. A small and pretty house with a slate-dark roof, standing beside the bank of the sea, and the caress of the warm wind. In front of it, they sit. Heads tilted back, appreciated the heat of the retreating sunlight. Dean’s breath is a ribbon caught on the thorns of his throat.

He steps forward, forward again, and his boots slip out of his fingers. They land with a thump on the sand, thick and rich sounding, and loud enough, as Dean paces forward, to raise the dark-haired head in questioning curiosity.

That face. Not its characteristics but its character. Soft concern, piqued concern, brow twined delicate and perceptive and piercing—Cas. He’s there. Jack looks up and smiles. He doesn’t seem surprised. But Cas does. He stands.

And Cas has been hanging out on a fucking _beach_ all this time? All this time that Dean was looking for him—praying to him—in heaven, and on earth. How many more unanswered prayers will there be? Cas said he _loved_ Dean and then he _left._ Just like they all do. Just like they always do—Cas no different, Cas worse, in fact, than all of them, because he saw and knew the nervous pattering breaking of Dean’s heart, and all his fears, and still he left. Left knowing it was would Dean would hate the most. Being told he was loved, and then abandoned.

Cas looks sad—scared, as Dean paces forward, heart, breath, fast and heavy. Why scared? Because he knows Dean is angry that Cas didn’t come and find him? How long—how _long_ has Cas been ignoring Dean’s prayers, listening with careless ears, knowing the weight of such feelings coming from Dean’s heart and doing—doing _nothing_ about it?!

“You found us,” Jack smiles, graciously, that new weird heaven-sent vibe he’s had going on, ever since—well, ever since the last time Dean saw him. “I was worrying you’d lost your way.”

“Lost my way,” Dean rolls his eyes, breath a stutter. “To _lose_ your way, you have to have _some_ idea of where you’re going, ass—”

Maybe he should think better than to speak to God in this way. But Dean’s in a rare and unusual and ridiculous situation of God being his smug, odd, _son._

“—And _you,_ ” Dean turns to Castiel, eyes burnt with tears. “You never came back—you never came back for me—”

Castiel watches and regards him steadily.

“Hello, Dean,” he says, everything even to the unsteadiness of Dean’s soul.

“—And I _prayed,_ I prayed—we looked for you, you were _gone,_ you left me!—”

“What are you doing here?” Cas asks, sadly. And Dean, furious, clenches his hands while his pulse spikes into a sharper, higher flickering in his chest.

“What, you mean after you didn’t come to find me? I died, and you—”

“You died,” Cas says, and his eyes shine with it, his brow slopes into that beautiful and hopeless upward incline. “You died,” he says, like he didn’t know. He didn’t—

“You,” Dean tries, and Castiel makes his way toward Dean, feet kicking up at the white sand. Dean’s heart pricks with every footfall. “You didn’t know?”

“Castiel is human, now,” Jack says, blinking in his weird and slow and sage way. “And has been, since I returned him from the Empty. We thought it might present an opportunity, to give him peace. Perhaps for different reasons.”

“Bobby said you helped with heaven,” Dean stammers, blinking dumbly from Jack back to Cas, who stands in front of him, now—close, so close, so close.

“Yes,” Castiel quirks a smile, “mainly… moral support. I’m leaning into the role of fatherhood.”

As if Cas ever did anything else, with Jack. Dean’s heart pangs with a hurting, warm affection.

“Castiel and I like to watch the sunset, here,” Jack provides, and smiles a little more like himself than he has, so far. “And I tell him how I’m feeling. I’ve been very busy.”

“Of course,” Dean trembles. Air is still being robbed from him. The sun is, slowly, sinking. “We couldn’t find you,” he turns back to Cas, and trembles with these words.

“Well,” Castiel says, awkwardly, “I was here. So…”

“I can see that,” Dean nearly sobs this out, and tries, furiously, to blink away the stinging in his eyes, thinking of the last time they saw each other, and how, then, both of them were crying.

“But you,” Castiel says, softly, and takes a small step toward Dean, “I wanted you to _live.”_

“I _tried,”_ Dean staggers out. “I was applying for _work,_ I had a _dog—”_

“I think,” Jack says, rising slowly from his seat, “I should come and visit you both, later. Dean—I’m sure you’ll have a few things to say.”

“Hundreds,” Dean answers, barely thinking about speaking, but the answer comes out anyway.

“Well. Perhaps we’ll talk. And,” Jack flicks up a smile, and looks so young and small again that Dean could almost cry, “I’ll tell you what I’ve been busy with, while you’ve been away. We’ve missed you,” he says, and Dean all but vibrates at the _we,_ but Jack and his bright innocence are gone. Now it’s only Dean, and the angel. Not angel, anymore.

He turns back to Cas.

Cas, who looks scared.

Cas, who is human.

Cas, who was waiting on a beach…

“You died,” he says, and looks, sadly, at Dean. Even in heaven, he still has the gentle blue-bruise of bags underneath his eyes. Dean’s chest is raw.

“I,” he fumbles, “on a hunt—it was stupid, I was stupid—just some accident on a hunt, imagine that? I was stupid—”

“—You were never stupid—”

“I was,” Dean presses on, swallowing, breath uneven. He wants to ask. He wants to ask— _did you mean it? How could you mean it? And do you mean it, still?_ “Just an ordinary case. In a barn. Like where we—”

He cuts himself off. Cas peers at him.

Dean knows the song in those eyes.

“You continued hunting,” Castiel says sadly, and Dean’s features flicker.

“You—you don’t like that?”

“You wanted to retire,” Cas says, the gravel, the knowing and certain warmth in his voice running across Dean’s skin and raising pinpricks up and down the length of him. “I could tell. I could always tell.”

“Well… getting out of the game… it ain’t that easy, Cas.”

“But you were trying to,” Cas says softly. “You were looking for work.”

“Yeah,” Dean admits. His chest is beginning to fill with some bitter fluid which tastes of regret.

“I’m proud of you, for that,” Cas says, and it’s like an unbinding. Dean all but melts.

“Yeah?” He asks. Cas exhales softly. Blinks in warm confirmation. As the speak, the sun is setting further, glowing pink-gold in its deepening place in the sky. “It’s my fault it didn’t get to… I was stupid. Just a fucking—a fucking _nail—”_ this is an exaggeration, or whatever the opposite is, but the point still stands. “And I just died.” He laughs bitterly. “I fought Lucifer, Death, even _God._ I get ganked by a fucking _spike_ on the wall. Picture it.”

“I’m sorry, Dean…”

Dean barely listens. He’s unravelling the mess of his own head.

“Maybe my heart wasn’t in it, maybe it was that my heart wasn’t in it…”

“And why wouldn’t your heart be in it?” Cas asks. That quirk of his eyebrows. Slope of his shoulders. The delicate and troubled incline of his head. God. Dean never had a chance. Dean never had a chance.

“My heart hasn’t been in anything. Not since…”

He looks up. Up, at Cas. He hates the guy for being so much more inscrutable than any normal person. But then he also…

“The last time we saw each other,” Dean says, and Cas licks his lips guiltily, a pink hue creeping across his cheeks. Here, _here_ is his Cas, the one who looks away when he gets anxious and uncomfortable, when the riddle of his own bright thoughts grow too loud. He wouldn’t lie—would he?

Not about this.

Dean’s mind is amuck with questions. He has to still them, re-centre them, on Cas.

“Dean,” Cas says, guiltily, “we don’t need to talk about that…”

“No, dammit, we’re _going_ to,” Dean presses. His heart is a raw and skinned live animal. “You never—you never ask _me,_ Cas, you never let me answer. What—you tell a guy you love him, and then you just—disappear? You think that’s okay? You think that’s how you should do things?!”

“In my defence,” Cas grumbles, “I was _taken_ by the—”

“Yeah, you timed everything _real_ good—”

“—You were about to be _killed,”_ Cas bites. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Dean’s lip trembles, even as it curls.

They haven’t even hugged yet. They haven’t even touched.

The sun is still sinking in the sky. The sea turns silvery in the lessening light.

“Still,” he shudders out, and yes, blinks out a few tears. Cas watches him, the way he used to look at Dean, all those years ago, when they first met and Cas was a new ethereal soldier who had not been softened to the world, yet. He watches Dean like, once again, they stand where they stood twelve years ago, in a barn shuddering with the force of an _angel_ within its wooden walls, and Castiel is trying to piece this new strange and raw emotive creature together in his mind, bend his thoughts around the rough edges of Dean.

“Still?” Cas inclines his head. His voice is softer.

“You never let me answer,” Dean shakes his head. “In _purgatory,_ I’d wanted to say more. You never let me say it.”

“…I didn’t know there was any more to say,” Cas bristles, uncomfortable. Dean huffs out a laugh. With it come more tears. But Cas is _here,_ Cas is _safe._ Cas scans Dean’s features like he’s trying to understand.

“There was everything,” Dean says, “everything more to say…”

“What?”

Cas asks the question like _he’s_ the one praying to Dean.

“You—you meant what you said?” Dean asks, instead of clarifying. “You meant what you said, that night, before—you weren’t lying?”

“How could I lie, Dean?” Castiel asks, the question ridiculous. “About that? The Empty wouldn’t take me for a _lie.”_

“But everything you said,” Dean blinks. The sky in paradise seemed this vast and deep thing when he first arrived. Now it ripples about them like water. Stars, as the sun sets, come glimmering out from behind heaven’s veil. “You… you can’t have meant that, Cas.”

“What?” Cas laughs, disbelieving.

“All those times—all those times you healed me, you heard me, when you put me back together—how could you think—how could you think it was something, something you could never have?” Dean asks, and blinks out more tears. “I thought you _knew.”_

“I don’t,” Cas falters, voice gruff, rougher than ever. Oh, and Dean could close his eyes to it; nearly does.

“For you, _you_ to speak of deserving, of undeserving—”

Castiel blinks, looks down, as though Dean’s words aren’t ringing true in his ears.

“You never heard me?” Dean asks, and Cas looks up, and sighs, and says,

“Jack told you—I’m human, now—I can no longer hear your prayers—”

“No, not that,” Dean sighs. “My heart. I thought that you could hear my heart. I tried to—I tried to bite down on it. I thought—I thought how you could hear it, I thought that you could hear it. I thought how everything that I love, leaves. So I tried to unstitch my heart from you—”

“Love,” Cas interrupts with a frown. If this is how Dean looked, when Cas cleft his heart open and poured out the truth in minutes, without a moment to digest… “Love?”

Dean can’t answer. He’s terrified, but Cas was brave—how was Cas so brave? Always so brave.

“—I thought that you heard _all_ of it, and didn’t, couldn’t—”

Dean cuts himself off. He looks down. When he has steadied himself, and looks up, Cas is close, and watching him.

“Dean,” he says, slowly. “What do you—”

“You said all that shit to me, man—you never even gave me the chance to say it back. Isn’t _that_ what happiness is? Love returning to you? You called _me_ selfless, you said I taught _you—_ what do you think—you think I’m,” Dean can barely find the words. He’s in heaven, and everything is ash. “You _saved_ me, Cas,” he says, “so many times—so many ways. You never even got to hear it back. And I had to _live_ with that. I never got to say it back. And you never listened—I tried to say it, in so many ways, maybe I should’ve said it, but—”

“—Dean—”

“I was scared,” Dean manages to tumble these words out into the dimming air. “I was scared, and you were so brave—”

“You don’t need to—”

“We _loved_ you, you have to know it. All of us. But me—” Dean’s eyes sting. He can barely see. “But me—like it was air. Or the ground. I pretended not to notice, ‘cause it hurt less. But it was always there. You were the only thing real, and you felt like it, too. And that was scary.”

“Scary?”

“I wish it hadn’t ended like it did,” Dean confesses. He clenches and unclenches his hands, terrified. “I wanted—when I let myself dream—I wanted it to look so different.”

“Dean, I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you?”

Castiel falters.

Both of them stare.

 _“Fuck_ you for taking that deal,” Dean spits, tears hot on his face. Cas blinks, hurt, taken aback. “Fuck you for thinking it wouldn’t mean anything—to anyone—and especially me. Like it wouldn’t mean anything, like you were nothing, and not everything…”

Cas’s hand reaches out to slowly take Dean’s trembling fingers and squeeze them, softly.

“Everything,” Dean looks up, from their tangled fingers, back to Cas’s features, his eyes, those eyes that have always pierced his very soul. Or perhaps not. Not if Cas had no idea, no idea that Dean—

“I love you,” Dean blurts out. Cas blinks, as though surprised, as though he could ever be surprised by this. Most worthy. Most deserving. “We all loved you. But _me,”_ he laughs, breathless. “Me…”

Cas is closer. Both of them are closer. The waves wash against the shore.

“You?” Cas raises his eyebrows. Dean knows that look. He’s felt what causes that look, been stung by it all his life, but these past few months, especially. Maybe there isn’t something so useless in it, after all. Maybe hope is the road to a new and good destination. Maybe hope is the thing that carries you there.

“More than any of them,” Dean says, sighs, it out. “More than anyone.”

“I didn’t know it was a competition.”

“They’re lucky it’s not,” Dean laughs. “I’d smoke ‘em.”

Castiel’s lips quirk. Dean’s are parted.

Silence for a moment. Only the sound of the surf.

“Jack’s heaven is nice,” Dean says, nervous, and Cas blinks.

“Yes,” Castiel agrees. “Present company excluded.”

“Shut your face,” Dean manages to laugh out, “you fucking _assho—”_

They’re kissing. They’re kissing like the sound of waves on sand. They’re kissing.

Now this. Twelve years. Now this.

When they pull apart, Dean’s breath stabs at his chest. The moon has come out to shine upon them and the pale sands and the weeping, washing, waters.

“Was that—” Cas falters, obviously noting Dean’s dumbstruck expression, “was that okay? I thought we—”

Dean cups his friend’s face, runs his thumbs along the ridges of Cas’s cheekbones. The moon halos its light behind Cas’s head.

Cas stops his nervous fumbling, Dean leans forward to graze his nose against his friend’s. Graze, then bump, more warmly this time. And then their lips meet again.

Dean pulls back to press his body tight against Cas’s in a hug. His arms are bound around Cas’s frame like a promise, which now, he can fulfil. Will spend forever fulfilling. He presses his face into the cradle of Cas’s neck. Cas’s breath is hot against his skin but somehow it still raises pinpricks along all of him.

His hand finds his best friend’s hair. He closes his eyes and listens to the sound of Cas’s breathing. It melds softly with the sound of the waves.

“I’m sorry for everything, Dean,” Cas speaks the words gently into the curve of Dean’s skin. “This was a long road. I would have chosen, for you, something so different—”

“—I get you,” Dean says, and shudders the words out.

“But you deserved a normal, a good life,” Cas reminds. “This is a loss… I… I would’ve waited for you, waited forever—”

Dean kisses up, up Cas’s neck, over his cheeks, back to his mouth.

“You don’t need to wait any longer,” Dean beams against those pale lips, breathless. “You would’ve. That means everything. But no more waiting. So now what?”

Castiel laughs. He laughs that warm and sun-bright laugh, that laugh that means sinking slowly into the waters of humanity and choosing to do so, repeatedly, every time, it turns out, on Dean’s account.

“A tour?” Cas asks, and takes his hand.

“Yeah,” Dean smiles. “How big is that beach house?”

“Big enough.”

“Big enough for two?” Dean asks, heart flickering high in his chest. Cas tugs at him, they walk over the uneven sands shining in the night air, toward the beach house.

“You’re very bold.”

“You lived in _my_ bunker—”

 _“Your_ bunker,” Cas rolls his eyes, and pushes open the door. He glances back at Dean. His eyes shine like starlight. “You look tired,” he says softly, and turns more fully in the doorway to run a thumb beneath each of Dean’s eyes, the touch as soft as falling snow.

“I chased the sunset to find you.”

“To _yell_ at me.”

“Only for a few minutes,” Dean smiles. Cas kisses him again. And again. They sit on Cas’s bed and talk and kiss for hours—or what might be hours, could be hours, because time passes weirdly here, and time with Cas passed weirdly anyway, felt like no time, the best time, Dean’s favourite time. The moonlight washes in through Cas’s threadbare curtains like a river. They lie, tangled, one of Cas’s hands in Dean’s hair, the other on his shoulder. Dean doesn’t miss the pertinence of this touch, the place that marked where Cas saved him. Twice.

Sammy is out there, living. That’s what matters. Dean will see him, soon. For now, he sees his best friend, washed in the silvery, liquid moonlight, eyes like two bright stars shining in this dim-darkness.

“How long were you driving for?” Castiel asks softly. Dean brushes his nose against Cas’s skin for no other reason than the fact that he can, for no other purpose but to relish it. “How long were you looking for me?”

“I don’t know,” Dean confesses. “It—it felt like years. Why is that? Jack said he thought I might lose my way—but if I was following—was following whatever part of him was speaking to me—”

“Hmm,” Cas hums. “Perhaps your heart is a little hard of hearing.”

“Huh?”

“I said I loved you _so_ many times, in so many ways—”

“Well, me too—”

“I see that we’re well matched,” Cas smiles. Dean presses his face against his best friend’s skin.

“Jack said he made you human so you would have a chance for peace,” Dean says. He looks up, nervously, at Castiel. “Do you think you have it?” He asks, afraid of the answer. This question is a risk, a leap of faith, or rather of hope. “Could ever—”

“I didn’t think I could have _happiness,_ until I spoke my love to you. And now I’ve heard it returned to me. What do you think?”

“A—a human life—in heaven, with me,” Dean says, nervous. “Is that what you want?”

“We take what we can get,” Cas sighs, melancholic, and Dean pushes off of him, rolling his eyes. But Cas is kissing him again, in the next instant. And feeling everything, a bright shining everything he said he felt, the night Dean’s world turned to ash. Feeling all those things for him, _Dean._ Who had felt and feared himself unworthy, for all those years. Unworthy of love. Unworthy of saving. Unworthy of a future which was anything other than a death sentence.

 _Dean,_ who has love, now, and everything to look forward to.

**Author's Note:**

> follow my twitter [here](https://twitter.com/thesilentIand)


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